Brian May Says Humanity Is ‘Living on Borrowed Time,’ But Queen Sounds Just as Great as Ever

Smoke 'em if you got 'em, everyone! Queen guitarist Brian May says it's only a matter of time before a giant space rock goes hurtling into the Earth and wipes us all out.

May, who definitely knows a thing or two about celestial bodies, shared his grim prognosis in a report recently published by the Financial Times and later picked up by the New York Post. Joining a grim chorus that includes astronaut Ed Lu, who told the paper that "NASA has done a very good job of finding the very largest objects, the ones that would destroy the human race, it’s the ones that would destroy a city or hit the economy for a couple of hundred years that are the problem," May threw his support behind a new campaign urging governments to patrol space for potentially lethal debris.

"The more we learn about asteroid impacts, the clearer it becomes that the human race has been living on borrowed time," said May. "The campaign launched this week is intended to raise awareness and put pressure on governments to act."

In the meantime, May might as well keep on touring with Queen -- especially since, as he argued in a new interview, he thinks the band's latest tour with singer Adam Lambert stands shoulder-to-shoulder with the classic work they did with the dearly departed Freddie Mercury. "The energy which we generate in an arena is, I would say, as strong as ever -- and I think Freddie would agree with me," he asserted. "I don’t think he would be upset with me saying that. I think the Queen show today that we do with Adam Lambert is the equal of anything we ever did."

If and when that big asteroid does hit, at least one band can take a small bit of comfort in its arrival: As we recently reported, Aerosmith's 1998 hit 'I Don't Want to Miss a Thing' sees a renewed surge of interest every time a deadly projectile sails a little too close to the planet.